


An Almost Fairy Tale

by wings128



Series: Once Upon A Fandom Fairy Tale [6]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Case Fic, Episode Style, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Sleeping Beauty Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wings128/pseuds/wings128
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets a call...</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Almost Fairy Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bluedelft's prompt over at LJ's Fairy Tale Meme: _"How about Almost Human and Sleeping Beauty?"_
> 
> A/N: This is my first attempt at an Almost Human fic, please be gentle :)

John sat at his desk, feet crossed on its clear surface and watched the toy giraffe follow its programmed routine, while the rest of the precinct bustled through theirs. This was the calm in John’s day, the forty three minutes he had to feel the sharp line of scorching caffeine and bring his brain online for the crazy. He guessed it was similar to what his android partner did in his daily uploads.

“Kennex!” Detective Paul barked over from his own cubical. “Tell your girlfriend to call your cell. I’m not your damn secretary!”

“Thanks, would you mind gettin’ me a coffee, sweetheart,” John drawled as he swivelled to smack the blinking red light on his desk-phone. 

“Kennex,”

There was a pause, a moment of white noise before a technically disguised voice spoke.

_“Trace this call you will not._  
_For I am The Sorcerer,_  
_Your Heroine I have got._  
_Slay the dragons if you dare;_  
_But only the Fairy’s kiss,_  
_Will save your maiden fair.”_

It was the kind of call John had secretly dreaded. The one that declared a loved one to be in danger because of a case he was working on. Only thing was, he had no family left, and certainly not the girlfriend Paul had mocked him about.

So why him? Why had today’s bucket of crazy, picked him as its target?

“John? Are you okay?” He hadn’t noticed Dorian’s silent approach, hadn’t noticed he was now standing; thoughts opening out to cover the whole of the city. “You look 49.72 shades of white.”

John turned, mouth open, ready to explain the call to his partner when Stahl interrupted by leaning in to place a stack of file screens on his desk.

“Morning.”

“Good morning, Detective Stahl,” Dorian replied with a nod and a blue eyed smile before looking curiously back at his partner, who appeared to be somewhere other than their current location. “John?”

John rubbed his hand against his stubbled chin, his thoughts still running over the message. “Upload the last incoming call from this phone.”

“Either of you seen the Captain? She was due in a meeting with the Commissioner an hour ago, she hasn’t called in and she’s not picking up.” Stahl asked as an afterthought from three cubicles down.

Dorian touched his arm and whispered, “your maiden fair?”

“Looks like it,” John growled and headed for the door, shrugging into his jacket as he went.

~♣~

He was stuck in the confines of a squad car, and it was the wrong time of day to navigate the freeway; but they had to start somewhere, and searching Maldonado’s apartment was as good a place as any. John knew it was a dead end, his boss had never slept in in her life – or at least in the two years he’d known her.

“It is unlikely that we will find the Captain at her place of residence.” Dorian said, accurately echoing John’s thoughts.

If he didn’t know better, John would’ve thought his partner had a telepathic chip implant or something.

“How ‘bout you search for possible locations where they might’ve taken her.” John barked, taking the final corner at speed and screeching to a halt in the no parking zone outside Maldonado’s building. “Let me know when you’ve got something useful.”

They were in the lift headed for the seventh floor when Dorian’s disco-face faded. “Aurora’s, Wall Sector 9.”

“What?” John scoffed. “That old place? The Castle Hotel that went outta business twenty years ago?”

“Yes.” Dorian answered, and followed John out the lift and along the run of deep blue carpet to the Captain’s door.

“Are we entering the premises?” Dorian asked after a minute of watching John mentally demote himself to beat-cop, should they break in only to find their boss stepping out of the shower.

“Hang on!” John muttered, hand hovering over the I-Dent panel. “What if…”

“It is unlikely that Captain Maldonado is currently occupying her home, John. Your instincts have a high probability of accuracy.”

John tried to hold his frown but it kept slipping into a smirk, so he skipped the doorbell and aimed a calculated kick at the lock.

He knew before her name faded from his lips that his boss wasn’t home. The tossed furniture, broken lamp, and trail of ruby blood on the otherwise spotless cream carpet, confirmed it.

“Call it in.”

Dorian, his jaw tight and decorated in neon, was ahead of him.

“Aurora’s?” John growled as he pivoted back into the hallway; the anonymous message he’d considered a crank, was now their only lead.

“Yes.”

~♣~

“I’ve been running analysis on the message from your phone,” Rudy explained in the slightly nervous, mostly tentative tone he seemed to only reserve for John. “And from the words chosen to create the verse, it appears the caller is referring to the recreational narcotic Hero-i-9 and its counteragent K1s.”

“So they’ve spiked her with that stuff?!” John could feel his temper spiking in outrage at the thought. “How d’we get hold of the counteragent?”

“You already have it on board, Kennex.” Rudy replied softly, in a deliberate attempt to keep the Detective’s hair-trigger temper from going off in his direction. “Dorian, it’s the silver epi-vile in the First-Response Kit under your seat.”

Dorian rummaged as Rudy talked over the car’s hands-free audio, and finally held up a tube about the length and breadth of a Cuban cigar. “We have it Rudy.”

“Sure, now I’ve also calculated the most probable loc-”

“We’re on it, be there in thirty.” John barked and severed the connection before Rudy could finish his sentence.

~♣~

“So, let me guess,” John griped, and flicked on the headlights as they headed into the dark scunge-filled atmosphere of Wall Sector 9. Eleven AM on a bright summer day and this place was still a different planet. Home of Sexbot pimps and Hero-i-9 dealers who fed off the lost dreams of society’s forgotten souls. “We’ve gotta slay some dragons.”

“Yes.” Dorian deadpanned as John pulled the cruiser in behind a late-model Chrysler in burnt orange threads, shiny chrome mags, and antique fluffy dice.

“This is one fucked up fairy tale.” John muttered as he eyed the crowd milling outside the arched entrance to _Aurora’s Castle of Beauty._

“There appears to be more than one dragon.” Dorian pointed to the guy who’d turned toward them; the pink overhead light reflecting on the silver dragon tattoo that covered half his face, its tail disappearing behind his upturned leather collar. “Luckily we have two princes.”

“Like I said, fucked up.” John reiterated, his focus on checking the load in his sidearm, and inspecting the _Wishville Pharmaceuticals’_ fairy logo etched into the epi-vile’s curved flank.

“Well, Prince Dorian,” John smirked, though his tone held no humour, “you slay the dragons, I’ll save the princess from the Blue Fairy, and we’ll meet back at our trusty steed.”

“Pinocchio.” Dorian corrected as they hopped out.

“What!” John yelled in an annoyed whisper across the roof of the squad car between them. He was edgy enough without Dorian pulling him up on details.

“The Blue Fairy is from the story of Pinocchio. In Sleeping Beauty, which is the story that best fits our current situation, the prince must kiss the princess to wake her from her trance.”

John waggled the epi-vile of K1s between the fingers of his left hand, before tucking it into the thigh pocket of his black cargoes. “Like I said, one fucked up fairy tale.”

“You still get to kiss the girl, John.” 

“Hmmm”

“I could do it for you if you prefer?” Dorian offered in an amused whisper as they covered the open ground between the cruiser and the crowded bridge.

“No, no, you just slay the Dragons.” 

“It’ll be my pleasure Prince John,” Dorian answered with the courtly manners of legend.

“Shuddup!” John hissed over his shoulder as they separated, and Dorian’s dragon-slaying skills afforded him the distraction he needed to breach the Castle’s defences.

~♣~

The putrid neon yellow of the spacious yet crowded interior messed with John’s ability to judge distance and he found himself taking oversized steps to avoid the bodies of Hero-i-9 junkies sprawled over the grimy floor. No one paid him any notice; too busy burning away every last vestige of memory from a life that’d already forgotten them.

The instinct that had gotten him this far nudged him in the direction of the sweeping staircase; it’s once highly polished banister missing its turned wood railings like rotten teeth.

‘Of course, if they were keeping her here, then she’d be in the tower.’ John rolled his eyes, adjusted his grip on his weapon and climbed; booted feet crossing each other in the crab step taught to every academy recruit.

The air was thicker up here, following the _Heat Rises_ theory, and making John’s eyes sting and water. He blinked rapidly, focusing on clearing each of the rooms along the second floor corridor. Nothing but more lost souls veining, or attempting to lose themselves in the scrawny bodies of their fellow addicts.

John had cleared all but one room, the one with the blue-green light flickering from beneath its door. Maldonado had to be here. He had no other leads; hadn’t looked for any, had trusted Dorian’s disco-face. John swallowed past the hard lump in his dry throat and kicked the surprisingly solid door back on its hinges; their protesting screeches loud in the morgue-like interior.

The tension that he’d held tight since arriving on scene swirled with the adrenalin, filling his veins with cool logic and making it easier to act. 

She was here.

~♣~

Finding Maldonado had been the easy part; because as John discovered when he stepped up to her bedside, the short fiery-tempered woman who kicked his ass on a daily basis was lying prone and vulnerable on a filthy out-of-date dentist chair. He didn’t know what to do. Did he just start yanking on the wires that punctured her smooth skin at every artery, or was it better to remove the scapulars holding her eyes open for the repetitive flickering images on the screen before them? 

It was hard to think. His nostrils burned and his hands trembled; but was that the come-down from the adrenalin hit, or the effects of the Hero-i-9 in the air? Did he give the Captain the K1s now, or did he have to free her first?

Footsteps in the hall beyond the shattered door brought John to his senses, and he put himself between the defenceless woman and the threat, raised his gun – its red laser severing the haze at head height.

“John!”

Dorian was here; had come after him. John lowered his weapon; turned, knowing it was okay to do so because Dorian had his back.

“What do we do?!”

John waited, Dorian’s disco-face bright and welcoming in the acid green haze as he scanned the inert body of their commanding officer.

“It is safe to kiss her John.” Dorian looked up, met John’s uncertain expression with confidence. “The counteragent will work.”

John fisted the vile, took aim and injected the serum right where Rudy had told him – an inch below the carotid artery.

There was no miraculous reaction; John had expected as much, though he’d still hoped. The room seemed darker, quieter, but it wasn’t until he’d turned to Dorian that he realised his partner had deactivated the imaging screen and was working on gently removing the cables, one at a time.

“Shouldn’t we wait f-”

“No one is coming John.” Dorian’s robotic voice was back; a sure sign of his disapproval. “The emergency services will not cross 88th Street. We must transport Captain Maldonado to them.”

“Fuck!”

“Remove the connections on your side.” Dorian directed as if he was speaking to a child who was curious about his facial circuitry. John would’ve argued at any other time, but he needed the guidance, his head felt like it was going to fall off any second. “I shall remove the scapulars.”

Maldonado started coming around just as Dorian was about to scoop her up off the bed. She screamed and fought with a heart-breaking weakness.

“I’ve got her.” John spoke, his tone non-negotiable and Dorian nodded before taking point. “You slay anything that gets in our way.”

~♣~

The retreat seemed to take far longer than John felt it should’ve. His arms ached from the surprising weight of the unconscious woman he carried, and his mind was on overdrive fighting the persistent Hero-i-9 fog as he searched out threats Dorian might’ve missed.

Cool air slapped a gasp from him as they made the bridge, and John tightened his suddenly shaky grip around his Captain’s back and knees. Leather-clad bodies scattered the decorative drawbridge, their disjointed limbs making the forty feet to the cruiser a perilous job since he couldn’t see where he was stepping.

“John!”

“I’ve got her!” John growled in annoyance as he stumbled and caught himself on the final corpse, before covering the open space to the relative safety of the car. “You drive.”

Dorian held the rear passenger door open, closed it after John had manoeuvred both himself and the captain in. It wasn’t until they were crossing the designated line at 88th Street, that Maldonado started coming round; confusion and fear still in her quiet voice as she murmured John’s surname.

“All is well Captain Maldonado. I slayed the dragons, Prince John here, kissed you, and now you are saved.”

“What?”

“Ummm…” John rubbed the back of his neck, and hoped in her stoned state that his boss hadn’t noticed the blush staining his cheeks. Dorian wasn’t gonna let him live this one down. Ever.

And just to prove that a human and an android could indeed be on the same wavelength; Dorian said in a tone befitting any storyteller worth his salt. “Once upon a time, there was a handsome dark-haired prince named Dorian The Brave…”


End file.
